A fighting game designed from the ground up to be so easy to control that even non-fighting game players can play it, yet deep enough to play in tournaments. Vibrant graphics and excellent online play.

All Reviews:

Very Positive
(122)
- 86% of the 122 user reviews for this game are positive.

Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.

Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you
should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“Competitive games require a lot of iteration to get right. We need months of time to develop the technical aspects of our netcode, to work on game balance, to add new features and game modes, and to increase our general level of polish. Now that the game is very far along and playable, we can best achieve the above goals by getting a lot more players involved. A larger player base will help us tune netcode, test balance, and guide us on our remaining features and game modes, so we're excited to bring you all into the fold!”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We plan to be in Early Access until Q3 2018. This is only an estimate and we could switch to full release earlier or later.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“We expect to add more content over the course of Early Access. It's planned to have 10 characters, more stages, more game modes, more character costumes, more visual effects, etc.

We also plan to optimize the game more over the course of Early Access so it runs well on a wider range of computers.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“We are in pre-alpha, which means that even though the game is playable and fun right now, we are far from feature complete. We have:

10 playable characters

Gameplay is representative of the final product, and is already tuned and balanced reasonably well.

Animations, visual effects, and sound effects are all in good shape for these characters.

We have five stages in the game, still under development, with more in the works.

Controller support. We support just about any input device. Just hold down any two buttons on your gamepad/joystick/guitar/etc and a screen will come up that lets you map the buttons to a PS4 scheme that the game understands.

”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“We plan to increase the price somewhat as we release more features and content during the early access period.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We're really interested in improving online play based on the community's feedback about any technical problems they encounter. We also develop the balance of the game organically over a long period of time based on player feedback and data. When it comes to new features and game modes, we have a lot in mind already, but we're open to even more ideas from the community, and to let the community tell us which things to prioritize.

We find it easier to manage all of this communication on own forums at http://forums.fantasystrike.com/categories but we'll try to mirror the important updates and monitor forums on Steam as well.”

Downloadable Content For This Game

March 17

The main things in this update are a lot of bug fixes to online play, Geiger now capable of facial animation, and some more polish for Argagarg's various Bubble Shield visual effects.

ONLINE FIXES

--Fixed a desync that occurred after Rook knocked down Lum with air C then stood right next to Lum as he got up.--Fixed some overlays (i.e. Move List) being impossible to close when the opponent disconnects.--Fixed a desync online that could occur when one player had the options menu open.--Fixed visual effects flickering when Geiger does his Time Stop super, and also during some other super cinematics.--Fixed some underlying tech that caused visual effects to sometimes flicker during online play.--After online matches, the score screen no longer displays crazy values of XP that give you like 10 levels at a time. Also, XP values have been restored to their correct amounts (no longer include the buggy XP that was given out).--If for some reason you don’t receive the server’s signal about how much XP you should get after a match, the score screen no longer forces you to wait a full 10 seconds before leaving. You now get the ready / change character / leave queue buttons right away, even then.--When going from Arcade to QM, after the QM finishes it resumes Arcade correctly (it wasn't doing it when clicking "Ready" in Score screen).--Fixed a bug that could match you with online opponents even AFTER you left the matchmaking queue(!).

MISC

--Fixed a bug that occasionally showed your character in a blocking pose even while secretly you were doing other moves, such as walking or attacking.--Attacks that are classified as weak or medium now have slightly more pushback.--If you lose a match in arcade mode, there is no longer a countdown timer when choosing whether to try again or not.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE--About half of Grave’s hitboxes have been revised to our new system. You will probably not notice much about this. The point of it is that it fixes various small, edge case errors where occasionally moves whiff when they shouldn’t. It’s basically “cleaner” under the hood now, for half of his moves at least. The only intentional gameplay change here is his jump A, which now has a bit worse priority. (We don’t have a lot of anti-air attacks, so jumping attacks don’t need to be that high priority.)--Fixed a bug introduced last patch where Grave standing in idle had incorrect pushboxes, causing Setsuki’s air C to sometimes push him rather than actually hit him.--Revised Grave’s shading. Now smoother to avoid weird looking highlights that he had after his model was changed to have facial animation.

JAINA--Skin shading slightly smoother.

SETSUKI--Hold C throw has 12f more recovery if it whiffs.--Hold B throw has 10f more recovery if it whiffs.--Fixed (again) an issue that could sometimes cause Setsuki’s hold-B throw to face the wrong way.

ROOK--Updated the animation for his ground super attempt to match the hitboxes. No functional change.

GEIGER--He is now able to have facial animation. (The other 9 characters got this ability last patch, so now all characters are capable of facial animation.) This was a huge technical challenge and took a long time.--Now has facial animations for main menu and character select.

DEGREY--New animation for B->B punch. (Gameplay is the same, just a cosmetic change.)--Adjusted the visual effects and hitboxes on forward+A elbow. This is just to make the hitboxes match the visuals better, and for the visual effect’s energy/dust to feel more polished. (It was a bit “wonky” before.)--Fixed a technical error on DeGrey’s coat that caused a visible gap between the top and bottom half of his coat, just below his belt.--Costume color 4’s shirt is dark red instead of bright red.

MIDORI--Dragon Form now has voiceover.--Fxied a bug that let Midori use his empowered throw (when he’s glowing, after he parries) at impossible times during his blockstun.--The Dragon’s wings no longer vibrate crazily when he’s on the 2p side.--Fixed a bug that caused the Dragon’s B torpedo move to travel a much shorter distance if done one frame before landing.--Fixed a bug in practice mode that caused the character-specific setting for Midori’s empowered throw to do nothing. It now actually turns on the empowered throw state.

LUM--Fixed a bug that made his (rare) mini-Rook item deal damage only on the first hit, rather than on each hit.

ARGAGARG--Bubble shield’s small bubbles are now animated and orbit Argagarg. There's also a transition animation when the bubbles go between "useless small bubbles" and "large single Bubble Shield."--New visual effects for when Bubble Shield pops (both from when you block an attack and when you pop it yourself with Air C -> C).

March 3

Hello all, we posted a big update to Fantasy Strike yesterday, and while all the new content is great, the online play got pretty rocky. The two reasons are that we "cleaned house" in our project but cleaned it a little too thoroughly and deleted a few things we shouldn't have. You know, like if you threw out all your garbage and there was a support beam for your house in there. Second, we updated to a new version of the Unity game engine and it turns out it has a bunch of issues with visual effects.

So, we scrambled to fix things and here's a list of what's different:

ONLINE FIXES

--Fixed an issue that caused quickmatches to immediately disconnect at the start of round 1 if either player was in practice mode or arcade mode when they got their match.--Fixed an issue that caused the rematch menu to stay on the screen after a quickmatch ended.--Fixed a crash when Lum was knocked down from Rook’s air C.--Fixed an issue that caused quickmatch opponents each seeing different stages for the match.--The versus screen before each arcade match and also before an online quicmatch now plays the voiceover line for the opponent only, rather than playing voice for both simultaneously, on top of each other.

VISUAL EFFECTS

The new version of the Unity game engine that we started using in the last patch has many differences in how visual effects are handled, which introduced a lot of bugs in our project, unfortunately.

--Fixed Lum’s “on fire” state, such as when he’s hit by Jaina’s C. It didn’t really work right in the last update.--Grave’s projectile now has its trail restored. (No gameplay change, the visual was wrongly turned off in the last patch.)--Four or five fixes all of the form “in online games, don’t have visual effects flicker around crazily too much.”

TEAM BATTLE

--Winning a game of team battle as Midori in Dragon Form no longer incorrectly gives you Midori for your next game, too.

CHARACTERS

DEGREY--Changed shading on DeGrey’s skin and lightened the dark circles around his eyes.

ARGAGARG--Changed graphics for the small bubbles on his Bubble Shield super, but we didn't finish (we're still in the middle of making this effect). Sorry, these will change again next time.

About This Game

Be an archer with fiery arrows, a colorful painter, a martial arts master who can transform into a dragon, and more! Fantasy meets martial arts in this vibrant world.

If You’re New To Fighting Games

Designed to work great on keyboard, no need for a special controller. We’ve streamlined the genre to get you to the fun decision-making part as soon as possible. All moves are just a single button press, combos are easy, move lists are concise. We’ve cut the chaff to focus on the heart of the genre so we can show you why fighting games are awesome.

If You’re a Veteran

This game is designed by an ex-Street Fighter dev and hardcore player for play in tournaments. Mixups, rushdown, zoning, and the grapplers seeming too powerful on day 1. It’s got all that. And you can play it with pretty much anyone in the fighting game community, no matter what other fighting game they play, because you can all reach basic competency in Fantasy Strike in minutes and start playing for real. Plus you can play with a joystick, gamepad, Guitar Hero controller, or whatever else you want.